


another grain of indigent salt for the sea

by prolix



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: AU - They Go to Tucson, American Southwest, Listen They Just Go to the Desert Okay, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 06:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prolix/pseuds/prolix
Summary: So, when do we get to visit? Adam texts Crowley about a month in.Aziraphale reads it over his shoulder as the demon groans, smiles to himself, and goes to make them both tea.





	another grain of indigent salt for the sea

**Author's Note:**

> thank you astra for yet again inspiring me to write something i never ever ever ever thought i'd write! wow!
> 
> muse(ic) is evelyn by kim tillman and the silent films  
> title comes from the rifle's spiral by the shins  
> enjoy, and i love you!
> 
> \- p

 

 

x

 

"Say, angel," Crowley says one night at the bank of the duck pond, tossing a chunk of bread that makes a small splash between two mallards and squinting up through his sunglasses at the overcast. It's very quiet just before sundown here, almost desperately so. "You ever think of leaving England?"

He can tell Aziraphale is giving him The Look, the one that comes before some of Crowley's more esoteric ideas, like driving a flaming Bentley down the M25.

"Leave? I like it here," he says.

"You would," Crowley mutters, then says, "what about a vacation, then? Always wanted to see the old colonies again - last time we visited was, what? War of 1812?"

"Pearl Harbor, actually," Aziraphale replies in a clipped voice. Crowley winces.

"And they're not the old colonies anymore, my dear," the angel chides, placing a smaller crumb of bread into the pond gently to appease the now partially drenched mallards, "it's been a bit since we've had any of those, though not as long as I'd like."

Crowley's not technically from England, so he doesn't have that old, old guilt that comes with it, but he still thinks of himself as an Englishman, and after a while seemed to kind of inherit it anyway. Still feels awful about the whole ordeal, really - being English. Aziraphale gets it, but then again, he would.

"Be nice. Never seen the Grand Canyon," Crowley muses. He scowls at the clouds.

"Awful hot," Aziraphale says.

"Wouldn't be too bad, we could leave in October. Get away from the snow."

"I like the snow!"

"You would."

And that was that.

 

x

 

It's been a long time since Crowley's bought anything, let alone had his currency converted, but his first tangible purchase after setting down in PHX is a set of flimsy postcards that Aziraphale insists they send to the Young and Device-Pulsifer households.

 _"Really_ , angel," Crowley says as they stand in line, "been here five minutes and you want to check in with the Antichrist and Those Two."

Aziraphale shushes him.

They spend the night in the city, a monument of steel and concrete that Crowley's sure is Down Below's doing - no one with a touch of Heavenly Benevolence left in their body would allow something with so much monstrous hubris to exist.

"Nice cars, in America," Crowley muses that night at their hotel, while Aziraphale busies himself with unpacking and reorganizing his camel-colored velour suitcases. He'd only packed a duffel and a backpack, himself. The angel shoots him a nasty look.

"Don't go getting ideas," he says, "we're only going to be here a week and change, my dear."

"Just a thought," Crowley says, and waves the conversation away. Aziraphale summons a bottle of wine for them to celebrate the occasion - their first vacation in a very, very long time. It's a nice vintage, something from 1978 with a pretty label, and Crowley wonders how long it's been since they've had an occasion to celebrate. Maybe saving the world, but that was less celebrating and more taking a deep breath of relief. Not much merriment, actually, in averting the Apocalypse.

Aziraphale pops the cork and Crowley summons two wine glasses, catching the tail end of Aziraphale's Look as the two frosted gold-decal glasses appear on the bedside table.

"Just trying to enjoy the moment," Crowley says with an appeasing grin that's all eyeteeth.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale says, filling them to the brim with a red that smells pungently of fruit and caramel.

"To us," the angel toasts, "and to a very well-earned vacation, I would say."

Crowley blinks behind his glasses and swallows once, hard.

"To us."

 

x

 

They make the drive down south in a Prius that's a few times removed from new from a rental service near their hotel. Crowley kicks the driver's side tire before getting in, and huffs when he turns on the radio and doesn't hear the beginning strains of Can't Stop Me Now.

Neither of them are used to driving more than an hour to get, well, anywhere, let alone being able to see the horizon out the windshield, and Aziraphale sits for a very long time in silence, watching the brush and various cacti slip by.

"I just realized we won't have the same stations here," Aziraphale says suddenly, "no BBC for miles and miles. How awful."

"Like you ever watch telly," Crowley snorts.

"It's the principle of the thing," Aziraphale says quietly, and Crowley realizes maybe they aren't just talking about television anymore.

"You miss it so much already?" Crowley asks.

"No," Aziraphale sighs, "actually, I'm quite happy to be some place with sunshine for more than two weeks a year. But doesn't it, I don't know, feel off to you?"

"Off?" Crowley turns to him fully, letting the Prius drive itself quite literally for a few minutes.

"This place didn't use to be a desert," Aziraphale says softly.

And England didn't use to be an island, Crowley thinks, but knows to keep his mouth shut for once. The angel probably wouldn't hear him anyway, as lost in thought as he is. He lets it go for now.

 

x

 

All the buildings in Tucson are one-story adobes that look like large terracotta lizards bathing in the sun.

The one they've rented out for the week is nice - a little quaint, with some outdated appliances in the kitchen and not a coffee maker in sight, much to Crowley's dismay, but the ceilings are higher than the ones in his apartment and their backyard has a lovely oleander bush that Crowley knows has been properly tamed by fear of the heat.

The demon can feel it now that they're properly settled - that off feeling Aziraphale was talking about. He feels it in the roots of his teeth, the leaves of the oleander, the quality of the light as it nears sunset - a kind of light he hasn't seen for a very, very long time. Phoenix had felt evil, the kind that Crowley knows he should feel a kind of kinship with, should feel a sense of belonging in, but he hadn't. Tucson is subtly different. It doesn't call to him the same way, and Crowley thinks maybe that's a good thing. Still, it gives him a headache.

"It'd be nice to walk through the city in the morning," Aziraphale is saying to him from the kitchen, "I hear there's lovely food to be found, my dear; I know how hungry you get after travelling - "

"I'm going out," Crowley interrupts, and grabs the spare key from the mantle as he goes. He won't need it, of course, but it gives his fingers something to fiddle with as the screen door shuts behind him and he walks out, a straight line that cuts through the roads between their house and the outer edge of the city.

The train tracks that splice the desert are abandoned at this time of day but well-used, their metal hot to the touch from the waning sun. The air is ambiently hot, but Crowley knows the old saying about nights in the desert.

He follows the tracks out a bit farther, until the sun sets on his left, and then out a bit farther than that. The cacti this far out grow wild, in clumps and in solitary pillars, shielded by the odd nurse tree. Crowley stops himself from hissing at them to stand up straight, to place that new arm growing in a bit higher, really, it's almost as if you'd want to fall over. These aren't his plants and this isn't his flat - he doesn't have any real power here, with these cacti that know nothing of fear and everything of parched dry sand.

It's only when it's completely dark that he sees it.

About half a mile ahead, a large crucifix backlit by many small bulb lights, yellowed light against the dark. As Crowley takes his glasses off, he can see the reflected light illuminate the sign beneath it.

 _God is Your Answer!_ it says in worn blue paint.

 _Then what's the question?_ Crowley wonders, before he looks up.

And up, and up, and _up_.

It's infinite, and suddenly so wide and clear that it knocks the wind from him. He'd forgotten how long it's been since he's seen stars, true and proper, stitched out into a sky so clear it almost has depth itself, layers and layers to the deep blue-black he's only caught glimpses of between clouds for the past hundred years.

Has it been that long?

Crowley breathes out, and in a single moment he can tell what the unplaceable off feeling is.

This land is _old_ , older than most. It used to be a seabed, teeming with life, with plants that sprouted through the silt, with creatures that swam by or trawled the ground, predators and prey and that narrow equilibrium of life, and this place _aches_ with the memory of it. It feels a keen sense of loss that Crowley recognizes instantly.

This is - _was_ \- Eden.

Not their Eden, no - that place was long, long lost - but an Eden. And it misses being that.

Behind him, there's the singular sound of miles-wide wings beating once through an incomprehensible dimension, and then Aziraphale says "That was rude."

"Sorry," Crowley says faintly, swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Aziraphale continues, his tone gentler as he dismisses the frustration - it's something Crowley envies in him, his ability to _forgive_.

This place is like him - it hasn't forgotten, and maybe forgiving is, after so many thousands of years, beyond it.

"Been a while since I've seen stars. Properly, I mean," Crowley replies.

Aziraphale stands beside him. Orion hangs overhead, ever chasing Scorpio on the other side of the sky. Crowley knows if he looks he can find Cassiopeia nearby, but he's stunned by the vibrance of the stars, the fact that he can see the individual colors of those massive clouds of superheated gas lightyears and lightyears away.

"You ever think," Crowley starts, and then pauses.

"Hm?" Aziraphale prompts.

"You ever think how exhausting that must have been, making All That by yourself?"

"I never really considered it," Aziraphale admits, "I always thought it was - well, you know."

"Ineffable," Crowley finishes with a curl to his lip.

"Precisely."

Crowley looks back down at the sign, the light-studded crucifix. If he unfocuses his eyes just enough, he can imagine the lights are stars, pinned to this desert-that-once-wasn't.

And for the first time in a long, long time, he unfurls his wings.

"Crowley," Aziraphale murmurs, a warning he can barely hear through the shift of aching, stiff feather-scales. He can't will them into their physical form yet, maybe won't ever be able to again, but the stretch that comes from his shoulder blades as they unfold in an Other space is enough for now. Iridescent, like an oil slick, miles and miles wide and shimmering a slick snakeskin black. Enveloping this desert, this heat, this feeling.

The sand below him reacts, just slightly, and Crowley feels _warm_ , warmer than from the heat in the late afternoon, than from the sun that had tracked him to this point, than the rebounded warmth from the concrete of Phoenix.

This is Eden, after all - it remembers him.

Crowley tips his head back and watches the stars.

 

x

 

Aziraphale is silent during the walk back, but Crowley can feel the angel's eyes on him the whole time, even as they cross the threshold back into their temporary house.

It's a one-bed one-bath, but Crowley doesn't mind sleeping on the couch. Aziraphale follows him into the bedroom as he starts to pull clothes from the wardrobe, and as he sits he finally says, "You like it here."

It's not a question, but Crowley still straightens and replies, "Yes."

"Do you know why I agreed to come?" Aziraphale asks suddenly.

Crowley turns to him, brow furrowed - he'd taken his glasses off at the door. He's never been uncomfortable with his eyes around the angel.

"It's been a while, my dear," Aziraphale says under his breath, as though he's trying to force the words out for better or worse, "since I've seen you happy."

There's silence, only modulated by the overhead fan spinning in off-kilter circles. Their wings are both away, but Crowley sees Aziraphale as much bigger than his corporeal body, something that takes up all of the space in this tiny desert home.

Crowley sets his clothes down on top of the wardrobe. The only light in the room is from the starshine outside, but it still seems too bright as Crowley crosses over to the bed, sits down beside the angel, and leans in to kiss him.

It's been thousands of years since they've done this (probably for the best, Crowley had thought to himself as he blinked the afterimage of solar-bright white feathers from the lids of his eyes), but Aziraphale still turns toward him in the same way as last time and catches his forward momentum with his hands.

"I'm happy," Crowley says as he pulls away, "I'm definitely happy, angel."

Aziraphale smiles at him. Crowley tenses as he realizes his hands haven't left his waist.

"You can feel it, too," he hazards. Aziraphale nods.

"I thought I felt it in London, just a bit," the angel admits, "but I think that was just the book shop. It's been a long time, I thought I'd forgotten."

Crowley shakes his head. "You never forget that."

Aziraphale leans his forehead against Crowley's cheek and hums. Crowley's arms come up to wrap around his neck.

"None of that 'sleeping on the couch' nonsense," Aziraphale says, "sleep here."

Crowley tenses again.

"Oh, for God's sake," Aziraphale sighs, "I said _sleep_ , my dear. I am still an angel, after all."

Crowley laughs.

"I seem to remember quite a few non-Ineffable actions from you in the past few months."

He bites his lip as Aziraphale's eyes flash a swirling silver from an Other place, just briefly, before settling back to his corporeal blues.

"I think the word is _Effable_ , my dear," is all he says.

 

x

 

They take the drive up to the Grand Canyon at the end of the week. Northern Arizona is much different from Southern Arizona, and Crowley notices it more and more as they go further and further from the cradle of the Sonoran desert. This place still remembers life, with its many tall evergreens and the soft layers of snow, the murders of crows that Crowley feeds bits of fast food to when they stop. It doesn't feel as acutely of the long-since evaporated sea.

They stop near Jerome for the night, and Aziraphale is charmed by the little ghost town set into a mountain, while Crowley thinks being this far above sea-level is probably not allowed for someone like him. Aziraphale buys him some beautiful locally-sourced copper studs anyway, shaped into little rattlesnakes. Even though it's a bit on the nose, Crowley still takes them with a smile and allows the angel to kiss him for his trouble.

Their Arrangement has been going steady for thousands if not millions of years, but Crowley's not so sure anymore of their tense status quo. Had it really always been like this, the two of them bickering back and forth and finding quiet moments of desperate truth to hide in? Had it really never occurred to him that he could have this?

Some demon, Crowley hisses to himself, then winces.

Aziraphale places a hand on his shoulder, looking capital-c Concerned. Always the worrier, good old angel.

"I'm fine," Crowley says, "shall we get back on the road?"

"Love to," Aziraphale sighs, "it's a wonderfully quaint little place, but not much to do."

Crowley thinks of that night standing in the desert, his wings brushing saguaros, knowing he could stay like that, still and silent, for eons, until the sun winks out and the oceans, miles and miles away, boil out of existence. He'd be perfectly content with that, he thinks - quite like the seventeenth century.

"Not much indeed," he agrees.

 

x

 

The Grand Canyon is teeming with tourists.

Not surprising, Crowley thinks in retrospect, but it still makes him raise his shoulders to his ears and push his shades back further toward his eyes. At least here most of the humans are also wearing sunglasses, so he doesn't look as out of place. The leather pants with the snakeskin boots were probably not a smart move on that front, though.

Aziraphale takes his hand as they near the edge of the precipice, and Crowley narrowly manages to resist taking it back on instinct. This is different, he knows, but it hasn't yet sunk in to the bone-deep level where all of his reflexes lie.

"Looks fake, doesn't it?" is the first thing Crowley says.

Aziraphale looks exasperated.

It does, though - even with Crowley's above-average sight, the depth of field required to see the canyon as anything other than a flat expanse of striated purple-red rock is out of his grasp. It looks like a cardboard cut-out pasted onto the horizon.

The sluggish thread-thin river that flows below is brown and crusted with ice and snow on its banks, and the tops of the hills gleam with it, but Crowley can still sense some of that desert energy radiating from the rock - it's hidden in the sandstone somewhere, where fossilized sea creatures sleep, undisturbed, as they have for thousands of years. It's in the sun hitting the violet striations just right, the scraggly little bushes that crawl from between the rocks along the edges of the cliff-face.

"Incredible, the things that didn't need Divine Intervention," Aziraphale comments.

Crowley blinks. "I always thought this was one of Your's?"

Aziraphale shakes his head, a little smile on his lips. His nose has turned red in the cold, and Crowley turns his head away from the warmth in his stomach.

"Millions of years of erosion, my dear, nothing more."

"Wow."

"It's always the things that don't require His touch that are the most interesting."

Crowley barks out a laugh. "Don't let Gabriel here you say that."

Aziraphale smiles privately and looks at him. His expression suddenly rearranges into something Crowley can't read - he hates when he does that - and he asks in a completely different tone of voice, "You weren't lying, the other night, were you?"

Crowley glances back at the canyon, the edifice of millions and millions years worth of labor driven by the Earth, untouched by anything Demonic or Divine. It's quite nice, he thinks, that there are things on this planet without those touches.

"No, angel, I wasn't," he says, and kisses him again.

 

x

 

They spend a quiet day in after the Grand Canyon - Aziraphale's cheeks and nose are sunburnt, which is an adorable look on him, Crowley thinks, even though it's quickly managed with a flick of the angel's wrist. Crowley spends the afternoon tending the cactus garden outside while Aziraphale makes tea, realizes it's far too hot outside for tea, and promptly ices it with a sour expression. He brings the demon a glass just before golden hour.

"The prickly pears are sassy," is all Crowley says before draining the glass.

Aziraphale looks at the squat little barrel cacti toward the far edge, the dried ocotillo strung in parallel rows that form a fence, the oleander crawling across the porch, and the dry bed ringed with bricks that might've once boasted an impressive patch of herbs. His eyes settle on a massive aloe sprawled out in the sun along the outer wall of the house.

"Fantastic plants, aloe," Crowley murmurs, "always wanted one myself, never had the right conditions to see one that big."

"Medicinal, aren't they?" Aziraphale asks amiably. Crowley hums. They're both silent for a long while.

Duck pond, Aziraphale thinks inanely.

"What are we doing, angel?" Crowley asks. The just-setting sun turns his hair a bright polished brass.

"Admiring the garden, dear."

 _"No,_ I mean - " Crowley snorts and kicks up a plume of dirt with the toe of his boot. The silt shifts, coughs, and settles a few feet away. "I mean all of this, this, going vacationing and seeing the sights and acting like _tourists_ to a world we just saved. What are we even supposed to _do_ now?"

"Rather don't know," Aziraphale says quietly, "there was never supposed to be a sequel to the End Times."

"So, we're just supposed to - what?" Crowley snaps. "Up There and Down Below don't quite seem to care about furthering the respective good and evil of mankind when there's no oncoming Apocalypse."

"It wasn't like we were any good at our jobs before Armageddon, love," Aziraphale says through gritted teeth.

Crowley throws his hands up. "Then I'm just absolutely stumped, angel, on what it is we're _even supposed to do_ now."

"Has it ever occured to you that I don't _know_ , Crowley!" Aziraphale finally spits out. Always the mediator, him, taking all of the demon's anger and frustration and hopelessness and trying to temper it. Trying to make something worthwhile out of nothing, out of fuck-all.

"I don't know what we're supposed to do! I wasn't exactly given a manual after all that Unpleasantness, there were no scheduled events Up There for after the Apocalypse!"

Aziraphale turns on a heel and stalks back into the house, the screen door shutting quietly behind him. Crowley winces at that. He rubs at his forehead, sending a dirty look over to the prickly pears.

"Oh, shut the fuck up already, you."

 

x

 

Neither of them technically need to sleep, it's just a useful habit they've both taken up over the centuries. Crowley sleeps on the couch that night, feet kicked up on the far armrest, but Aziraphale takes a thermos of tea and a mug out to the back porch and watches the sky. There's no forthcoming answer from the stars about the pit of uncertainty he feels in his stomach.

"I'm sorry I yelled," he says softly at about three in the morning. After a moment, he feels Crowley shift to sit next to him on the concrete stoop.

"'Salright. Should really invest in a porch swing, though," the demon says, still a little sleep-ragged.

Aziraphale glances at him.

"Bad dream?" He hazards.

Crowley shrugs, snatching the thermos up from between them.

"Nothing unusual," he says, deftly not answering the question. Aziraphale elects to let it go.

After a while, Crowley looks down from the sky and asks, "What are we doing, angel?"

Aziraphale sighs, "My dear - "

Crowley shakes his head, tapping him on the shoulder intently.

"No, I mean you and me. What are we doing?"

Aziraphale blinks and considers it for a moment. Their Arrangement had always been, in his mind, something unspoken. Ineffable. A quiet if tense stalemate that neither of them reported back to their respective Higher Ups and Lower Downs about.

Sword, snake. Never the easiest equilibrium, but they got on alright.

"I suppose... I'm not quite sure," he says.

Crowley nods. "Then that makes two of us."

Aziraphale turns his head back toward the stars, but takes Crowley's hand with his own.

If the past few months have taught them both anything, at least, it was _fuck equilibrium._

 

x

 

"I've decided I want one of those dinky things," Crowley announces over brunch at a nice little cafe down the street from the college, nodding out the front window toward their rental car.

"A _Prius_ , my dear?" Aziraphale asks with a curl to his lip.

Crowley shrugs. "Good mileage. Slick, too, once you get used to it."

Aziraphale shakes his head and finishes off his cappuccino.

"I'll never understand Demonic fashion sensibilities."

Crowley flashes him a raptor smile.

 

x

 

They watch the sunset together one night at the end of their week-and-change tenure. For a place so hard, Crowley muses, its sunsets are astoundingly _soft_. Pastel pinks, yellows, and oranges over a landscape of obscured purple mountains.

Crowley straightens as the last rays dip and wane, Venus a little speck of light just over the horizon, and turns to Aziraphale and kisses him.

They haven't said a word to each other for a few hours, now, just enjoying the scenery in peace, but as Crowley pulls away Aziraphale looks at him sadly and says "You're going to want to stay, aren't you?"

Crowley mulls it over. He could lie, could follow the angel back to that miserable little island with its pubs and duck ponds and lonely studio flats and book shops and snow and the Them and That Device-Pulsifer Woman and That Pulsifer-Device Man. He would, too. He'd do it in a heartbeat.

Venus winks at him and the sand, a pelt over the desert, breathes in deep and warm. His wings flick against his back.

"Yes," he says, without an ounce of that lie in it.

Aziraphale tilts his head and rests his fingers against the demon's jaw. As he opens his mouth, Crowley cuts in with a sour "If you say anything at all about _Ineffability_ , my love, I swear I'll punch you."

Aziraphale laughs, closes his mouth, and kisses him again instead.

This place is Eden, alright, Crowley thinks, and feels his wings catch the desert air in agreement.

 

x

 

Crowley drives their rental back up to Phoenix while Aziraphale makes a phone call to their renter, weekending in Oregon, and by the end of it as his phone clicks closed she's convinced that yes, Portland is such a _wonderful_ place to spend the rest of her life, and that she'd love to live closer to her extended family up there and to the _ocean_ , oh how she's missed the ocean. He'll acquire some proper paperwork for the house anyway, no need to fly in the face of bureaucracy, but he whistles to himself anyway as he moves about the kitchen, setting up tea for when Crowley gets back.

A week later the coffee machine Crowley had ordered arrives on their stoop, and holding it proudly in front of him like a new father, the demon announces that _now_ this place is finally a home.

Aziraphale gathers a few dozen wilting plants from the clearance section at the nearest home improvement store, Crowley lays out some odds and ends from dinner on the curb for the neighborhood feral cats, and the two claim opposite ends of the bedroom as their own (Crowley gets the window). Crowley has his plants shipped back, _carefully_ , and Aziraphale has the most important books in his collection shipped back, _carefully_.

Crowley conjures up a vanity plate for the all-black Prius he's affectionately been calling _Bentley Two._ After a Look from Aziraphale, though, he begrudgingly drives down to the DMV to get the proper stickers for it.

Aziraphale picks out a modest tank and a goldfish as tenant and places her in the living room. The angel insists on _Mary Magdalene_ , but Crowley suggests _Lilith, Mother of Monsters,_ and they compromise and settle on _Eve_.

Crowley still wakes up in the middle of the night and goes out into the garden to watch the stars and give his wings a stretch among the saguaros, and Aziraphale sometimes looks at him as though he can hardly see a demon in front of him at all, but it's fine - it's fine. Aziraphale kisses his jaw before bed and Crowley makes them cappuccinos in the morning before breakfast even though he prefers americanos, so they make it work.

 

x

 

 _So, when do we get to visit?_ Adam texts Crowley about a month in.

Aziraphale reads it over his shoulder as the demon groans, smiles to himself, and goes to make them both tea.

 

x

 

_end._

  



End file.
